Brash Texas billionaire and cricket mogul Allen Stanford was indicted and jailed on charges his international banking empire was really just a Ponzi scheme built on lies, bluster and bribery.

The US Justice Department announced charges against the Texan and six others who allegedly helped the tycoon run a seven billion US dollar swindle.

At a court hearing in Richmond, Virginia, a US federal judge agreed with prosecutors that Stanford poses a flight risk and ordered him to remain in custody until a future detention hearing in Houston.

Among those charged were executives of Stanford Financial Group and a former Antiguan bank regulator who prosecutors say should have caught the fraud but instead took bribes to let the scheme continue.

Robert Khuzami, the enforcement director for the Securities and Exchange Commission, said investigators have built “an impressive criminal case from the rubble of this massive fraud”.

If convicted of all charges in the 21-count indictment, Stanford could face jail terms totalling 250 years, officials said.

Dick DeGuerin, Stanford’s lawyer, said in a written statement that Stanford was “confident that a fair jury will find him not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing”.

The indictment unsealed in Houston charged Stanford and other executives at his firm falsely claimed to have grown 1.2 billion US dollars in assets in 2001 to roughly 8.5 billion dollars by the end of 2008. The operation had roughly 30,000 investors, officials said.

Investigators said that even as Stanford claimed healthy returns for those investors, he was secretly diverting more than 1.6 billion dollars in personal loans to himself.

Court papers charge Stanford and top executives orchestrated the massive fraud by advising clients to buy certificates of deposit from the Antigua-based Stanford International Bank.

Stanford and the other executives were charged with wire fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Stanford was also charged with conspiring to obstruct an SEC proceeding.

While Stanford is less well-known than infamous swindler Bernard Madoff, authorities say both men’s businesses were based on the same type of scam - faking investment returns while attracting new investors to keep the operation afloat.

“This case is a typical Ponzi scheme, robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Gregory Campbell of the US Postal Inspection Service.

Authorities say they are investigating 100 other possible Ponzi schemes, although none on the scale of the Stanford or Madoff cases.

“We will find you, we will stop you, and we will make you pay for your crime,” said Mr Campbell.

Stanford, 59, has been working since February to challenge what his attorney called “the false accusations against him.”

Mr DeGuerin said that rather than resulting from fraud or a Ponzi scheme, “the present insolvency of the Stanford Companies was caused by the SEC’s heavy-handed actions, which have destroyed and continue to destroy much of the value” of the companies and their investors.

A group of cheated Stanford investors said in a statement that their losses “are devastating, as senior citizens are losing their homes, going without medical care, and becoming a burden on their children and families”.

Stanford surrendered to the FBI on Thursday and the following day appeared in federal court in Richmond, Virginia, where authorities convinced Magistrate Judge Hannah Lauck to keep him behind bars for the time being.

Prosecutor Steven Tyrrell said at the hearing that more than one billion US dollars from Stanford’s alleged scheme remains unaccounted for, and if anyone has access to it, it’s Stanford.

The others indicted in the case were Stanford executives Laura Pendergest-Holt, Gilberto Lopez and Mark Kuhrt.

A separate indictment unsealed in Florida accused a fourth Stanford worker, Bruce Perraud, of destroying records important to the investigation.